Setting up Ventrilo

Click on the -> next to the User Name dropdown box and click New. Put in a name people will recognize: this could be your main character's name, or a nickname you go by. Don't worry about Phonetic - this is just so the text to speech engine can pronounce your name when you enter a channel but it isn't necessary. Click OK.

Click on the -> next to Server. Click New, call it AIE, click OK. For the Hostname, put in just aie.typefrag.com, and the Port number is 3784. The Password can be found both in-game in your game's guild information window or in UMAMI (login required to view it), and changes every now and then, so if you can't log in, be sure to check those places for the new one.

Click Setup - It is best to use Push To Talk mode, so people don't hear you coughing into the microphone. If your room is fairly quiet, this usually isn't an issue, but if your little sister is watching Spongebob in the background, that can get annoying (unless of course your raid group LIKES Spongebob, in which case they may ask you to turn it up.) On the right side of this window are the settings for what the voice audio uses. If you're using a USB headset, make sure that the Output and Input devices are set to use it instead of your computer's speakers. You shouldn't need to screw around with any of the other settings.

You should now see "MSG: Server is available. Press connect." If you do not get this message, go back and check all your settings for typos. Also check your firewall - it may be blocking the ports used by Ventrilo. You'll need to check the help files for whatever firewall you're using to make sure it is set correctly - worst case would be to put it into "Learn" mode and let it ask you if it's okay to let Ventrilo connect to an external server. (If your Firewall has a "Game" mode or "DMZ" setting, you may want to use that, but be careful when you do - your system is now unprotected. If you tab out of WoW to look something up on a web site, your firewall may not see if something bad tries to hit you.)

Click the Connect button, and you'll be connected to the AIE Ventrilo Server. Scroll down the list to find the available channels - Raid channels are for large raiding groups, Quest channels are for 5-man groups.

Using a Headset

When using Ventrilo, (or any voice communication system) if you are going to be talking on it, get a headset. USB headsets are not expensive, and make things SO much easier for you and everyone else. Here's why:

It separates out the sounds. If you're in a raid, you need to be able to hear instructions being given. The game is making its own noises, so sometimes people's voices can get drowned out. By using a set of USB headphones, you can set the game audio to come out of your speakers and the voice audio to come out of the headphones. This way, even if someone is talking kinda quietly you can still hear them, but you can also still hear what's going on in the game.

You can be heard better. If you use a stick mic, or worse yet a built-in mic on a laptop, every sound in the room is picked up by that microphone. As a result, every time you try to talk, all everyone else hears is game sounds, your dog barking, your mother screaming in the background, etc. If the game sounds are coming out of your speakers, they broadcast into the microphone, which is broadcast over Vent, which plays out your computer speakers, which goes back into the mic, which goes over Vent, echo, echo, echo, echo... I ran with someone in another guild for a while who just never could understand why we kept complaining about the echo because he just would not go get a dedicated headset.

Setup Walkthrough

See Ventrilo Normalization to equalize the sound levels of other people in Ventrilo without tweaking the volume for each person.